Nightfall

Prologue// Frozen Solid

Glistening, light snowflakes fall to the dead leaves on the forest floor, covering their dry crevices like a winter blanket. Large, barren trees loom high, their black branches wickedly entwining and twisting until one can not see where one tree begins and the other ends. Moonlight shines through in fractured beams, lighting the snow covered earth with a dim blue-white glow that gives the place an eerie, mystic feel. Never before had the forest seemed so cold.

The frozen ground crunches under a young boy’s bare feet as he runs for his life. His harsh breathing fogs the icy air as his lungs burn and heart beats erratically in his chest. Adrenaline runs like blood in his veins, giving him the strength to continue pumping his exhausted arms and legs. Sweat matts his midnight black hair to his forehead and the back of his neck. Low branches claw at his face and clothes like spindly fingers, tearing his ripped shirt and pants. The snow bites his pale skin and freezes his open eyes as the flakes continue their deadly fall.

An gnarly root half hidden by slick snow catches the boy’s foot and he lets out a choked cry as he tumbles to the ground, head striking an upturned rock. Not wasting a moment, he tries to spring up to his bloody feet, but his vision sways and blurs, and he slumps backward into the snow. Reaching a shaking hand to his pounding temple, his trembling fingers come back stained and dripping red.

Out of the darkness, a shadow rises between the trees. Black like ink, it twists and thrashes in the snow-ridden air; a stain of fear against the purity of white. The shadow morphs grotesquely

until it is so thick it starts to resemble a hand, then an arm, then a body. What used to be like wisps solidify; a figure born of darkness and grief. The shadowman nears the boy on the ground, walking on the snowy earth without leaving a single footprint.

Mind swimming, the boy tries to shuffle away from the creature, stumbling as he crawls backward on his elbows until his back hits the rough stump and roots of a tree and he can move no further. The blood drains out of his pale, beautiful face; high cheekbones, straight nose, and wide, terrified blue eyes. He chokes on a scream, the bottled up words seeming to be lodged in the center of his throat.

The creature chuckles at the boy’s fear, a bone-chilling sound like the rasp of a dying man’s last words. He hovers over the young boy– a child of perhaps twelve years of age– enjoying how his lower lip trembles. The boy has not yet discovered how to control his terror, the creature realizes with humor, though it is not often when one can actually resist the fear its kind brings. “Are you afraid to die, my little Angel boy?” The creature muses with its scratchy voice, leaning closer and letting its fingers stroke the youth’s cheek.

The boy gasps at the freezing touch, the feeling of ice spreading through his veins and surrounding his heart causing his body to convulse in shivers. “W–what are you?” The boy chokes out, his voice shaking and barely a whisper. His eyelids feel heavy, and he fights to ward off the drowsiness of hypothermia.

“A Nightmare,” the creature rasps. “But you are not asleep.” And with that final word, the shadow plunges his hand into the chest of the boy.

The boy lets out a last scream of pain, coldness like fire filling every ounce of his blood and body. He feels frozen inside, and he realizes with a numbness that this must be what it feels like to die too young.

 

The last thing the boy sees before his eyes flutter shut is the darkness of a demon, and the beauty of falling snow.